September 18, 2009

The Virgin Mary

The title is a bit dramatic, I know. But it is how I felt this past week - like Mary on Christmas Eve. No rooms at the inn . . . Let me go back to the beginning . . .

8:00 Tuesday morning I arrive at the airport in Greenville to catch my flight. Just as we are about to board they make an announcement that there is a slight issue and a mechanic just needs to "come sign something off. It will only be five minutes". Well after about 30 they make another announcement that they are just waiting for the mechanic to arrive and as soon as he does he will just sign some paperwork and we can be on our way. They continue to make this same announcement for close to two hours. Meanwhile I am thinking, it is 10:00 on a Tuesday morning, the airport is very small, where the heck is the mechanic coming from? It shouldn't take almost two hours to get there. The flight I was trying to get on was to Atlanta and it only takes 2.5 hours to get there, maybe they were bringing in a mechanic from there??? (J/K) Anyhoo, to make this part of the saga short I will just say that the "five minutes to sign a document" turned into five hours. About every 20 - 30 minutes they would make an announcement telling us not to leave the area because as soon as the paperwork was signed they were going to take off and not wait for anyone. It had been about 45 minutes since the last announcement so a guy from our flight went up to the counter and asked what was the latest on our flight. She said that it was cancelled. He asked why she hadn't made the announcement and she said that she had (she hadn't, we were too scared to leave the area so we know she didn't). Anyway, we gathered our things, we back outside of security, stood in a very long line waiting to speak to the representative to rebook our flights. Most people were being delayed until Wednesday but because I was a medallion member I was rebooked on a flight leaving in an hour. Well that flight was then delayed another two hours for weather in Atlanta. So by the time I finally got to Atlanta, ran through the airport (which is another story but will make this too long of a story so I will just hold off on that) and got to the connecting flight gate the doors had just closed! At this point I was starting to get annoyed. I waited in another long line to rebook the next flight - and spoke with a lovely woman who was incredibly helpful and kind (yeah right, so was a total jerk!). I have to admit that I had a very large margarita and it took the edge off a bit! I finally made the connecting flight - last one to Salt Lake on Tuesday. I arrived in SLC and go to get my car (at about 11 pm). The car is not there, why you ask, because they "didn't think I was coming" so they gave it away. There were about thirty to fifty other people with the same problem - not all of them booked with the same company. So we would hear a little rumor that Avis had five cars left and we would all run over to the Avis desk to fight for the cars. Then an announcement would be made that they were out so we all ran to the next desk to wait in line for their cars. When the last car, literally the last car available in the SALT LAKE CITY airport (c'mon seriously it is not like this is Podunk, NE it is a LARGE city!) was rented I finally got in line at the taxi station. A $130 cab ride later I am on my way to Ogden, UT which is about 30 minutes from SLC. I am telling the cab driver about my saga and he joked that it would top off the night to have the hotel give away my room. I suddenly felt very sick because I just KNEW that was going to happen. So with about 15 minutes to go in the drive I called the hotel and of course they had given away my room. They said all the other hotels in the area were also booked but they did find me a room in a city about 30 minutes away.

Can I just say that I HATE TO TRAVEL and that I wish it would be six months before I had to get on another plane???

5 comments:

That sounds terrible!!! When you said "at the point I started to get annoyed" I was thinking, wow I would have been annoyed way before that! All things happen for a reason, even if the alternative is not fun.

Oh, wow...MY blood pressure went up just reading that post!! You poor thing! (I do not blame you for having the margarita, by the way---you deserved it!) I hope the rest of your trip was smoother. What a horrible day!! And like Stef mentioned, I would have been annoyed way earlier than you (you are so easy-going!). I would probably have burst into tear somewhere in the first 5 hours... :)

Omigod.. just reading that made me furious. I would have committed murder.. serious murder.. well I hope your return is a smoothier! At least it was for work, can you imagine if that was a vacation and it went like that. I would have killed somebody. But note to self if you are delayed to call all hotels/care rentals to make sure they keep the reservation!

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